All Chapters of Transmigrated As The Billionaire's Discarded Wife: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

The ending ruined my morning. I read it on the 5:40 train home, still in scrubs, my feet screaming after a twelve-hour ward shift, and I actually said "No" out loud. A man across the aisle glanced up. I didn't care. Chapter thirty of *Crowned by His Moonlight* was four paragraphs long. Seraphine Locke, the wife ignored for twenty-nine chapters, calls her husband from a rain-slicked road. He sees her name on his screen. Marguerite's hand rests on his sleeve. He declines the call. Seraphine dies pregnant and alone. Chapter thirty-one opens with the wedding. "Four paragraphs," I whispered to my phone. "She gets four paragraphs." I typed a one-star review with shaking thumbs. My head dropped against the window. The last thing I felt was cold glass against my temple. *** The first thing I felt when I woke up was silk instead of my scratchy hospital blanket. Silk, cool and heavy, sliding over my bare arms. Above me, a white plaster ceiling carved with flowers, and a chandelier hangi

Day eighty-nine began with a phone call from my stepmother. I let it ring four times. Then I answered, because the system had told me she would try to reach me at 7:02 a.m., and I wanted to hear exactly how she sounded when she was losing. "Seraphine, darling." Delphine Locke's voice was warm honey over broken glass. "Your father and I are worried sick. Come home. We'll smooth this over with the Blackwoods." *Thank God the little fool is still in the city. If she talks to a lawyer, we're finished.* The thought landed in my head clear as a spoken sentence. I pressed two fingers to my temple against the throb. "That's kind of you, Delphine. But I have a nine o'clock." I said. "A nine o'clock?" A tiny pause. "With whom?" *Who would she know? Who?* "Nobody you'd recognize," I said, and hung up. My hands were shaking. I put them flat on the bedspread until they stopped. "Mind-reading usage logged," the system said. "Headache severity: moderate. Recommendation: hydrate." "You're

The car Rafferty sent was a plain grey sedan with no logo, no driver in uniform, and a woman in the back seat who introduced herself before I'd even closed the door. "Dr. Nadia Vance. Obstetrics." She held out a hand. "Mr. Cole says you need someone who doesn't gossip." "Do you?" I asked. "I deliver babies for a living. I know where all the bodies are buried, and I've never dug one up." Her smile was small and dry. "Seatbelt, Ms. Locke. We're going to take the long way round." We did. Forty minutes of side streets, two U-turns, and a parking garage where we switched cars without anyone speaking. Dr. Vance watched the mirrors the whole time. "You're careful," I said. "I was told there might be a tail." "There was?" I asked. "There was." She glanced at me. "He's gone now." *He.* I thought of the black car outside the Blackwood gates and the thought that had followed me through the dark. I didn't ask. "Scheduled event," the system said in my ear, unusually quiet. "Greenwich Wom

Delphine Locke filed her counter-motion at 8:57 a.m., three minutes early, because she had never once in her life waited for permission.I knew because the system told me while I was brushing my teeth."Counter-Motion filed. Subject: emergency freeze of the Elena Locke Family Trust. Grounds: *the beneficiary's mental instability and unauthorized disappearance.* Hearing scheduled: 2:00 p.m. today."I spat, rinsed, and stared at the lipstick on the mirror. DAY 88. A line of red, a hand-drawn reminder that I was losing a countdown in slow motion.By 9:20, Ms. Odley was in my living room with her coat still buttoned and a legal pad already half covered in her tight, slanted handwriting. A younger man stood beside her in a navy suit, tall and precise, with a leather briefcase held like a shield."Seraphine, this is Idris Vaughn," she said. "Mr. Cole's counsel. He'll be arguing the petition.""Ms. Locke." He shook my hand once, firmly. "I've read your file twice. I have good news and bad ne

The torn ledger went to Rafferty's team before midnight.By morning, Imogen Fisk, his assistant, had taped the shredded pages into something readable. She delivered the result to Vaughn's office in a plain gray folder, with the dry summary of a woman who had never once been surprised."Eleven transfers," she said. "Locke Meridian operating funds to a holding company called Halcyon Row. Eleven months, same amount each time, and every approval signed *D.L.*""Delphine," I said."Delphine. And Halcyon Row's registered agent is an Ellison family attorney."I stared at the page. Two families, one pipe, and my mother's company running through the middle of it like a vein."That's the first thread," Vaughn said. "We pull it carefully.""How carefully?" I asked."The kind where nobody sees the thread move."I nodded then my phone buzzed with a message from an unknown number, and my stomach turned over before I read it.*Seraphine, it's Marguerite. Please. Can we talk? Just us. I'm so sorry. I